Breadcrumbs

• You are here: Home
• News
• College development gives sixth formers more energy

College development gives sixth formers more energy

An innovative new energy system will provide low-cost heating for a new sixth form facility that has just been completed for Lambeth College in south London.

Built by family-owned construction company Osborne, the new facility has been developed at the existing Clapham Centre, located on the south side of Clapham Common.

Part funded by the Learning & Skills Council, the £20 million centre has been built over five storeys and includes specialist facilities for performing arts and creative studies, with modern information and communications technology infrastructure provided throughout the building. There are 43 new teaching rooms and the facility will accommodate 1,200 students. Also included are an IT centre, a roof garden overlooking Clapham Common, a learning resources centre, a dance studio and a theatre with three performance spaces, which can be combined to provide one large, 160-seat auditorium.

The structure is a post-tensioned concrete frame, which enables greater clear spans than reinforced concrete and enables the use of thinner floor slabs than a steel frame building.

The innovation that will cut the centre’s fuel bills in future is the use of geothermal energy.  Geothermal pipe work was incorporated into the structural piles by attaching them to the reinforcement cages that were sunk into the wet concrete. Branded as Energy Piles^TM, this technique allows the College to harness the free heating and cooling available from the ground. The energy provided by the Energy Piles ^TM will be used in tandem with a displacement air handling system, which requires lower running duties than traditional systems.

Not only will the energy piles provide for most of the building’s heating needs during the winter but it can also be used in reverse to cool the building in the summer.